Apple Maps Vehicles Begin Surveying England, Coming to New Orleans Next Month
Apple’s fleet of vehicles collecting street-level mapping data has arrived in the United Kingdom as planned, with the first verified sighting in Solihull, England, approximately two hours northwest of London. While camera-equipped fifth-generation Dodge Caravans have been used to collect mapping data in the United States, Apple appears to be using second-generation Mercedes-Benz Vito vans in Europe.
Apple Maps van driving in Solihull, England in June 2015
Apple confirmed earlier this month that it is driving vehicles around the world to collect data to improve Apple Maps, and the mapping imagery is almost certainly being used to create a Google Maps “Street View” competitor. Apple Maps vehicles are also taking photos of businesses and storefronts in major metropolitan areas to replace current imagery provided by third-party sources such as Yelp.
The cities and regions where Apple Maps vehicles will be driving in England through July:
East of England
Essex (Brentwood, Epping Forest), Hertfordshire (Broxbourne, Dacorum, Hertsmere, St Albans, Three Rivers, Watford, Welwyn Hatfield)
Greater London
Barking and Dagenham, Barnet, Bexley, Brent, Bromley, Camden, City of London, City of Westminster, Croydon, Ealing, Enfield, Greenwich, Hackney, Hammersmith and Fulham, Haringey, Harrow, Havering, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Islington, Kensington and Chelsea, Kingston upon Thames, Lambeth, Lewisham, Merton, Newham, Redbridge, Richmond upon Thames, Southwark, Sutton, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, WandsworthSouth East
Kent (Dartford, Sevenoaks), Surrey (Elmbridge, Epsom and Ewell, Spelthorne)West Midlands
Birmingham (Sutton Coldfield, Perry Barr, Erdington, Ladywood, Hodge Hill, Yardley, Edgbaston, Hall Green, Selly Oak, Northfield), Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Staffordshire, Walsall, Warwickshire, Worcestershire
Apple has also updated its Apple Maps vehicles website with a new list of locations where it will be collecting data between July 1 to July 14, with notable additions including New Orleans and unmapped areas in Santa Clara County. Apple may also be at least temporarily finished collecting data in multiple states it has canvassed over the past several months, including Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Hawaii.
(Thanks, Stephen!)
TWC is threatened with the first Net Neutrality lawsuit
It’s been less than a week since the net neutrality rules came into force, but they’re already being used to slap the ISP that everybody loves to hate. According to the Washington Post, Commercial Network Services is about to file a complaint against Time Warner Cable for holding its video traffic to ransom. CNS runs SunDiegoLive, a site hosing webcam streams across San Diego, which is popular with the military crowd whenever a US Navy vessel comes into port. As far as CNS is concerned, TWC has been charging unreasonably high rates to let these videos get through the internet without being throttled into dust.
It’s believed that the complaint, which will be submitted to the FCC in the near future, will ask the commission to decide if TWC is right to charge CNS for access. For its part, the internet provider says that it’s happy to share and swap traffic for other ISPs, provided that they reciprocate with similar “free peering” on their end. CNS, on the other hand, is described as an “edge provider” that isn’t entitled to the same sort of connection goodies that the big boys get. There’s no way to tell how the FCC is likely to rule, but given Time Warner’s horrible reputation, we’re fairly sure we know where most people’s sympathies lie.
[Image Credit: Getty]
Filed under: Internet
Source: Washington Post
Two questions with legendary ‘Mega Man’ creator Keiji Inafune
Keiji Inafune co-created Mega Man in the 1980s — and the rest, as they say, is history. He’s led a storied career in video games ever since, building franchises such as Dead Rising and Onimusha. Inafune currently heads up his own studio, Comcept, where he’s finishing production of Mighty No. 9, an action platformer that raised $3.8 million on Kickstarter in 2013. But, more on that later. One of the truly surprising announcements to come out of the Xbox showcase at this year’s E3 was ReCore, a new IP from Inafune that features a woman in an arid world of robots that carry glowing, mysterious cores. The Xbox conference revealed a trailer, a spring 2016 release window and not much more. We sat down with Inafune at E3 and asked him two questions: one about ReCore and the other about the state of creativity in the video game industry. He had plenty to say.
Regarding ReCore
As some people may know, I really love robots. Pretty much all of my games have some type of robots in them. With ReCore, the theme I wanted to write was human versus robots. This world is — there were humans before, but now, there are none. There are a bunch of robots in this world already and the players will wonder, “Why are they here? Who made those robots?” Probably humans, but they’re not here anymore. Also, the core in those robots, they’re a different technology than the robots themselves.
So there’s a huge mystery between what happened to the human race, where the robots come from and ‘”what is the core?” This is kind of the overall theme, the mystery of this world. That’s something that I wanted to write.
Regarding the state of video game creation
The way I see it, there are two walls blocking the creative of the game industry. One, this is not necessarily a bad thing, but the mobile games are getting huge. People, when they make games, they have to think about business. Making mobile games is easier on the business side, so people tend to go toward that side.
Another one is, it’s getting really hard to start a new IP nowadays. Myself, I’m getting ReCore out, which is a new IP. That’s nice. But, with all of the announcements happening at this year’s E3, we don’t see too many new IPs happening. It’s almost all sequels or some kind of spin-off or existing IP. I’m not saying that’s something bad, to make sequels, but it also kind of stops people from thinking new things about games. They want new creative and new creative tends to happen more when you make a new IP. So, hopefully this can change from here on, so the game creators will have more opportunities to make new IP and make new creative. That’s what I’m hoping for.
IT glitch sees 600,000 RBS payments go missing
RBS has just stepped into another IT nightmare. The company, which owns the Royal Bank of Scotland, NatWest, Coutts and Ulster Bank, has admitted that 600,000 customer transactions weren’t completed last night. It hasn’t revealed the exact nature of the problem, referring to it only as “an issue with our overnight process.” The electronic mishap means a large number of customers haven’t had direct debits and credit applied to their accounts — the sort of transactions that people normally use to make important payments, like household bills. The banking group says sorting its customer’s balances is now a top priority and that delayed payments will be processed “no later than Saturday.” That’s quite a wait, although the larger question is how such a technology-centric failure was allowed to occur in the first place. Shouldn’t there be fail-safes for these sorts of situations?
We have fixed the underlying issue, and are working flat out to get these payments updated for affected customers no later than Saturday 2/4
– RBS Help (@RBS_Help) June 17, 2015
[Image Credit: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg via Getty Images]
Source: BBC, Twitter (RBS)
Artificial intelligence learns Mario level in just 34 attempts
Perhaps it’s that all the levels have simple, left-to-right objectives, or maybe it’s just that they’re so iconic, but for some reason older Mario games have long been a target for those interested in AI and machine learning. The latest effort is called MarI/O (get it?), and it learned an entire level of Super Mario World in 34 tries.
Unlike other AI programs, MarI/O wasn’t taught anything before jumping into the game — it didn’t even know that the end of the level was to its right — instead, some simple parameters were set. The AI has a “fitness” level, which increases the further right the character reaches, and decreases when moving left. The AI knows that fitness is good, and so, once it figures out that moving right increases that stat, it’s incentivized to continue doing so.
Mirroring actual evolution, MarI/O didn’t actually change its behavior with any forethought. Every generation introduced new ideas, but it was simply trying different things, not doing what it “thought” would work. When an idea was a success, it was remembered, when it wasn’t, it was discarded and learned from. Over the course of 34 evolutionary steps, MarI/O ended up working out jumping though the entire level would do the trick. If its creator Seth Bling were to run it again, the AI would almost certainly find a different, but no less successful path through the level.
This learning style is called NeuroEvolution of Augmenting Topologies (or NEAT, for short), and it’s nothing new, but it’s interesting to see it used so effectively. While it’s a good demo, there’s a long way to go before machine learning like this could ever hope to challenge a more functional algorithm. Check out the A* path-finding bot below, which won a Mario AI competition back in 2009, to see what we mean.
Filed under: Gaming, Software, Nintendo
Via: Holly Brockwell (Twitter)
Source: Seth Bling (YouTube)
NASA’s heat shield tech could save firefighters’ lives
NASA has teamed up with the Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service to see if the agency’s heat shield technology could be adapted to protect people during forest fires. Currently, firefighters carry a 4.3-pound “personal fire shelter” — a large tinfoil snuggie that’s designed to keep them safe from extreme heat. NASA, however, thinks that the technology it developed to prevent spacecraft from burning up in the atmosphere could do a vastly superior job.
The partnership began after NASA’s Mary Beth Wusk and Anthony Calomino learned of the death of 19 firefighters during 2013’s Yarnell Hill Fire. The pair had been working on a new thermal protection system for future spacecraft that was designed to deal with the sort of extreme temperatures that forest firefighters deal with on a regular basis. After investigating hundreds of different configurations, researchers at NASA’s facility in Langley believe that they’ve managed to vastly improve on the original design.
The prototype is now going to be shipped to Canada, where a team from the University of Alberta will burninate the gear to see how it holds up in extreme conditions. With the data from these field tests, it’s hoped that NASA and the Forest Service can replace the existing technology in the very near future. As you can see from the documentary clip we’ve embedded below, using a fire shelter is terrifying, so we can get behind anything that improves the experience.
[Image Credit: NASA Langley / David C. Bowman]
Filed under: Science
Source: NASA
ICYMI: Driving like 007, making Super Mario and more
Today on In Case You Missed It: Super Mario Maker gets a release date and trial run at Best Buy and Range Rover is developing a smartphone app that allows drivers to steer when they’re outside the car. Also this NAO robot tries to befriend a dog and freaks it out instead.
Plus we wanted to bring you these fun facts we just didn’t have time for: This heartbeat chip tests medicine based on natural rhythms and Russia says it’s building a microwave gun.
Let us know about any cool stories or videos that you stumble across by using the #ICYMI hashtag @engadget or @mskerryd.
Filed under: Cellphones, Misc, Gaming, Robots, Transportation, Science, Nintendo
V-Moda’s 3D-printed headphones can cost you up to $40,000
From clothing to food, 3D-printed consumer goods are still a hit or miss at this point. Even so, that hasn’t stopped companies from trying to feature this novelty in their products. The latest to do so is audio gear manufacturer V-Moda, which has revealed its plans to use new components for customization purposes. Starting today, V-Moda will let users personalize its XS and Crossfade M-100 headphones with 3D-printed shields made of different materials, such as fiber, stainless steel, sterling silver, solid 14 karat gold and platinum.
Don’t let that $40,000 price tag mentioned above scare you, though, as that’s only for the platinum; the 3D-printed fiber and stainless steel parts are expected to be sold for $40 and $100, respectively, depending on the style of your headphones. V-Moda says it’ll be making the program more robust in the future, so you can expect additional color and material options to be available in the future.
Filed under: Misc, Peripherals, Portable Audio/Video
The Sony Xperia Z4v is everything the Z4/Z3+ should have been
Verizon has found itself the receipient of the only QHD Xperia in the world with the newly announced Z4v. It also supports wireless charging and has a larger battery than the standard Z4/Z3+. How did this happen?
Once upon a time, Sony could do no wrong. It had a venerable army of top-notch tech ranging from Walkmans, VAIO computers, the Playstation, Bravia televisions, AIBO… the list goes on and on. Lesser companies would be happy to have just a couple of successful products. For many of us who like tech, myself included, Sony was the epitome of the industry. A bastion of inventiveness, innovation, and creativity. It was also consistently in the black, and revered the world over.
Fast forward to 2015, and the Sony that exists today is of a rather different nature. VAIO has been sold off, the OLED division sold to JDS, some PMP Walkmans are now retailing for over $1000, the company is still trying to stay out of the red, and has diversified into insurance sales and banking (here in Japan, at least).
Sony designs used to be an inspiration for Apple’s Jony Ive
Sony has also just released the Xperia Z4 (Z3+ in global markets), amid much outcry among the fans who felt betrayed: the design and specs were almost an exact clone of that which released last fall, the Z3.
Perhaps the biggest issue was the inclusion of a standard, Full HD display amid a sea of OEMs who are opting for QHD panels, domestic rivals Sharp and Fujitsu included. Jonathan Lin, General Manager of Sony Mobile Taiwan, even went on record to openly proclaim that, “At the moment, making the move to 2K technology on 5- to 5.5-inch screens does not seem able to achieve market segmentation, so we have no plans to launch 2K phones… [we won’t do so until there are] significant improvements in display quality and digital image processing technology.”
A confusing turn of events
Curious then, how the just announced Xperia Z4v throws everything into contention. It’s a smartphone that has significant changes, not the least of which is, in fact, a QHD display, along with wireless charging, and a slightly larger battery. (It’s also slightly thicker and heavier, yes).
The Verizon-exclusive is everything that the standard Z4 should be, yet it’s not.
It’s also a product designed for a country where Sony has an extremely small market share, rather than the only one where it has a major stake: Japan.
This graph, from December of last year, offers several important metrics with respect to Sony in Japan: (1) it has the largest market share of all Android OEMs, (2) the market share peaked in July when new handsets released and then dropped, and (3) it began to recover slightly in October.
Japan is the only country where mainstream consumers actively seek to buy Xperia phones, and actively seek to avoid Samsung (the S6 and S6 Edge reportedly failed to impress the Japanese). Perhaps even more importantly, Japan’s market also has the likes of Fujitsu and Sharp, both of which have products available with QHD displays, and in the case of Fujitsu, with iris-scanning technology as well.
A bit of background
The Verizon Xperia Z3v was also a bit different from the global Z3.
Before continuing, let’s just establish that in many cases, carriers dictate what and when things happen when it comes to OEMs. Look no further than last year’s Xperia Z3v to understand just how much influence Verizon had on the appearance of the device, which some were quick to accuse made it a visual clone of the Z2 that came before it. (The global Z3 had some design changes). Given that Sony is releasing the Xperia Z4 internationally as the Z3+, one might argue that only Big Red was able to (or perhaps interested in) making changes.
The reason for this could be any of a multitude of possibilities, though it’s possible Verizon sought to negotiate with Sony to bring a device that would feature truly cutting-edge specs on par with rival phones, as well as craft a device that is superior to those from rival carriers. This may – or may not – have involved guarantees, financial compensation, stipulations, or various other arrangements.
At the very least, it’s clear that Verizon, more so than any of the other carriers, seems to have considerable sway in having Sony see its way, curiously even more so than among any of the Japanese carriers (though again, we can only speculate as to why Japan’s largest provider, NTT docomo, didn’t make similar demands).
A question of logic
Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful: the Verizon Xperia Z4v has a gorgeous QHD display to offer its potential purchasers. Many Sony fans around the world look on it with immense envy.
This entire situation is a confounding one at best, and one that doesn’t seem at all logical. There are three main points of contention here:
1. Sony is snubbing its home market. We have already established that the Xperia brand has the largest Android market share in Japan, and with more and more OEMs releasing products of increasingly impressive specs, Sony really needs to bring its “A” game if it wants to remain Android’s top dog. If any country deserved to have a QHD product, it’s Japan.
2. Sony is angering many of its core fanbase. When the Xperia Z4 was first announced, the outcry of outrage was quite obvious. One of our own staff members scribed a piece calling out Sony for its ways (though another piece was presented to postulate the predicament). The design was lamented, as was the retention of the same screen and camera module seen in the Z3 that had released some months earlier. Even the most die-hard fan can only take so much similarity, and in pulling an “HTC M9″ Sony inevitably burned a few bridges. Having a product like this, with a QHD display, would have definitely made the Z4 less of a contentions topic.
With financial results like this, Sony can’t really afford to be angering anyone.
3. Sony is backtracking on the divisive, clear-cut statements it has been offering. Granted we’ve already seen how the company’s global PR team has some consistency issues to work out earlier this year. But when the General Manager of an entire country’s business operations goes on record issuing comments about use of QHD technology in smartphones, there is a major problem when just weeks later, those words are proverbially eaten. If I were a shareholder of Sony stock, I’d sure as heck be ticked off from the misleading remarks out of Taiwan (and then, of course, from the failure to implement the Z4v changes to the Z4/Z3+ model).
“We have no plans to launch 2K phones without significant improvements in display quality and digital image processing technology” – Jonathan Lin, GM of Sony Taiwan, May 27, 2015
A look at the future
Let’s hope Japan’s leading tech company can finish with the pretending and start getting serious with substantial product releases on a global scale.
The future of Sony Mobile’s smartphone products is truly up-in-the-air it would seem, at least with respect to specs. Now that a QHD device has been produced, it would seem clear that the next Xperia, the Z5, will make use of such a display. This would, in theory, at least give it a cause for legitimacy should Sony opt not to update many of the internal components. Then again, there seems to be clear consistency issues in terms of what the company says, and what it does. This is, of course, all among the overall backdrop of controlled crisis as problems continue to mount.
One thing is clear as crystal however: Sony Mobile needs to get its act together, and do so immediately. It needs comprehensive, cohesive leadership that can put out a top-notch product on a global scale, and do everything in its power to retain the core market segment is currently has in Japan. People can forgive and forget, but even the most promising set of patience won’t last forever.
Samsung introduces Game Recorder+ at E3, allows game recording on Samsung devices
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As many gamers will know, the recording of game footage on Android is a generally arduous affair involving either root access or other hardware. Samsung, surprisingly, has a solution for users of its devices, announcing Game Recorder+ today during the festivities of E3 2015. Utilizing a UI overlay when games are running, and not requiring any root access, Game Recorder+ will allow Samsung devices users to record game footage at up to 1080p resolution.
Those who record gameplay for YouTube videos and such may be interested as the Game Recorder+ allows the front camera and microphone to be used to record your face and voice while your gameplay is happening – of course, an upload of YouTube is also just a touch away. If you have a Samsung Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, Galaxy S5, Note 4, S4, Note 3, or Note 2, and have between Android 4.1 and Android 5.0, you’ll be able to make use of this neat little app. Samsung hasn’t given much indication on when it’ll actually be available on the Google Play Store (and Samsung Apps), but we’re expecting to see something once the excitement of E3 has died down.
What do you think about Game Recorder+? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: Samsung Tomorrow via SamMobile
The post Samsung introduces Game Recorder+ at E3, allows game recording on Samsung devices appeared first on AndroidSPIN.
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